To the extent that democracy still exists in the Western world, Mencius Moldbug notes, it exists in the form of the two-party system. The parties may change their names, but really they’re the Inner Party and the Outer Party, and it’s not hard to tell which is which:
The function of the Inner Party is to delegate all policies and decisions to the Cathedral [university system and mainstream media]. The function of the Outer Party is to pretend to oppose the Inner Party, while in fact posing no danger at all to it. Sometimes Outer Party functionaries are even elected, and they may even succeed in pursuing a few of their deviant policies. The entire Polygon [power structure built around the government] will unite in ensuring that these policies either fail, or are perceived by the public to fail. Since the official press is part of the Polygon and has a more or less direct line into everyone’s brain, this is not difficult.
Even a “threat” like McCarthy only scored “10 milli-Hitlers”; he didn’t begin to purge the State Department. But he has been kept around as a boogey-man:
Devotees of the Inner Party and the Cathedral are deeply convinced that the Outer Party is about to fall on them and destroy them in a new fascist upheaval. They often believe that the Outer Party itself is the party of power.
Democracy is meant to serve as a pressure release valve, in case either side goes too far:
But since elected politicians in the Cathedral system have, as we’ve seen, no real power, what we’re looking at here is not a pressure release valve, but a fake pressure release valve. The regular exchange of parties in “power” reassures you, dear voter, that if the State starts to become seriously insane, the valve will trip, the bums will be thrown out, and everything will return to normal.In fact, we know exactly what Washington’s policies twenty years from now will be. They will certainly have nothing to do with “politics.” They will be implementations of the ideas now taught at Harvard, Yale and Berkeley. There is a little lag as the memes work their way through the system, as older and wiser civil servants retire and younger, more fanatical ones take their place. But this lag is getting shorter all the time. And by the standards of the average voter forty years ago, let alone eighty, Washington already is seriously insane. What is the probability that by your standards — as progressive as they may be — Washington forty years from now will not seem just as crazed? Fairly low, I’m afraid.